


Redemption In The Hands Of A Child

by ununquadius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Redemption, Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 15:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17963210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ununquadius/pseuds/ununquadius
Summary: Draco is awaiting his trial when a child talks to him.





	Redemption In The Hands Of A Child

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to matsinko for being a wonderful beta! <3
> 
> Hope you like it!

The corridor looks very long, like they had stretched it until it extended to the infinitum. There isn’t too much light here, either, just a few candles floating near the heavy, black door next to Draco. 

Draco thinks that he can run away if he wants to. There’s nobody here with him, guarding him. The Aurors have left after spelling chains around his wrists. But maybe they have cast some other spells too to prevent him from escaping? 

What’s going to happen to him? House arrest? A life sentence in Azkaban? The Dementor’s kiss? He shudders. He deserves it, he knows as much.

He turns to the left. Footsteps approach. 

“Stay there on the bench, okay?” A man says. Draco can’t see him very well due to the darkness of the corridor. “I’ll be right back.”

“Yes,” a little voice replies. A child. 

The child sits on the bench in front of Draco’s. He’s small - his feet that he waggles don’t even touch the floor. 

“Hi,” the child says, “are you here for the trial too?”

Draco finds it odd that a father would leave a child alone with him. Didn’t the man see him? Didn’t he know he left his son with a Death Eater, a criminal?

“Yes,” he answers.

He envies the child - so naive, as he was once too. He wishes he could go back to being seven or eight-years-old. To grown up again, better this time; to be brave enough to refuse to be a part of the dark side.

“Dad says that the man they’re judging today helped kill mum.” Sadness fills the child’s words, and Draco feels a pang of guilt. He hadn’t killed anyone, but he isn’t innocent either; he’s part of the murderers. “But I think he isn’t right,” the child confesses in a whisper, after looking carefully to both ends of the corridor. 

Draco smiles, unable to help himself. 

“And why’s that?”

“Because dad says that this man is seventeen-years-old,” the child says as if it were the most obvious thing. 

“And you don’t think seventeen-year-olds can do evil things?” he asks, amused.

Draco doesn’t know what he’s doing, speaking with a little kid about good and evil, but it feels good to talk to someone after so many weeks in a cell. 

“Mmmm,” the child furrows his forehead, deep in thought. “Maaaaybeee, but I think you have to be old to kill someone. Mum was old. A teenager couldn’t have killed her.”

The amusement Draco have felt evaporates at the kid’s reasoning; he isn’t a naive child after all. He’s looking for a way to understand, he’s defending his mother, glorifying her: if she died at the hands of an older person, it’s the murderers’ fault and if she died at the hands of a teenager, maybe it was because she didn’t fight hard enough. 

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

He truly is. He can’t imagine his life without his mother. He can’t forgive himself for all the times he had mocked Potter for being an orphan. 

“They killed her because she was a Muggle-born.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco whispers. 

He doesn’t know who the child’s mother was, but he remembers the prisoners they brought to the Manor—order members, Muggles, Muggle-borns—all of them tortured and killed. And he did nothing to save them. The child’s dad is right: Draco killed his mother. 

“You didn’t kill her.”

“I…,” Draco moves in his seat, uncomfortable, as he decides what to tell the kid. As he moves, the chains move too, and the noise startles the kid. He opens his eyes wide, and Draco sees how realisation breaks in his little mind. 

“Did you?” Tears gather in his eyes, as he looks at him in fear.

“I didn’t cast the curse that killed her. I don’t even know who your mum is, but I’m a Death Eater.”

Contrary to what Draco thinks will happen, the child relaxes. 

“I knew someone so young couldn’t have killed mum.” He smiles and then glances again at the corridor, checking they’re still alone. “Have you killed anyone?”

“Not directly… I mean, I haven’t cast any killing curses.”

They fall silent after that. The kid returns to waggling his legs and Draco to thinking about what awaits him.  
Five minutes later the black door opens, and an Auror comes to retrieve Draco. He’s pulled on his feet roughly and pushed inside the room. As he’s dragged to the chair in the middle of the room he hears a little voice saying, “I don’t think you deserve this, you look nice to me.”

Maybe, just maybe, he can learn to be a better person after this, he can have a life. If a child so hurt by the war like this one can see something good in him, maybe he isn’t so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading


End file.
